Well we finally got back up to Long Lake to finish our search of two winters ago. Under the direction of Steve Sehnert and with the cooperation of a beautiful summer weekend, many points were recovered. A full write up will follow shortly.

After our first fund raising event, we have recently purchased V. Colvin’s compass and tripod. It appears to be a Gurley “pocket railroad compass” model no. 157, with a 3 1/2″ needle, a 4″ limb with vernier reading to five minutes; the vernier for the magnetic variation is also five minutes. The manual recommends tripod model no. 168 (the light compass tripod) with legs 4 feet 8 inches, usually mahogany or cherry.

This purchase was facilitated through a descendent of V. Colvin’s Albany neighbor finding our website and contacting us.

We had the occasion to use it on our last recovery and here is C. Donald in the role of instrument man re-inacting a “preliminary reconnaissance” from Bolt 260. This is the type of work the compass would have been used for, i.e. establishing sight lanes that needed to be cleared, identification of distant peaks and the gathering of station ties etc.